Curacao Reports Double-Digit Percent Tourism Growth in March

The Curacao Tourist Board (CTB) has reported an additional 3,986 visitors in the third month of this year. Visitor arrivals in March 2015 increased by double digit growth of 11 percent compared to March 2014, continuing the positive development reported at the start of the year. Altogether, a total of 39,676 visitors were registered against 35,690 in the same month last year.

JetBlue’s new route from New York continues to reflect in the positive performance of the US. Stay-over arrivals from North America increased by 14 percent in March, with a total of 8,716 visitors compared to the 7,655 visitor arrivals in March 2014. The United States with 6,009 stay-over arrivals recorded a 9 percent increase.

Canada recorded a 28 percent increase with 2,707 stay-over arrivals this March 2015. This increase is directly attributable to the weekly services from Toronto (WestJet, Air Canada and Sunwing).

The new seasonal route from Montreal with Air Canada has also been instrumental in growth out of this market. In addition, the combined marketing actions with partners in the tourism industry caused a significant improvement in the performance of the North American market.

The South American market increased by 49 percent in March 2015, with a total of 10,776 stay-over arrivals compared to 7,225 in 2014. Demand out of Venezuela remained strong. For this market a 65 percent increase was registered with a total of 7,412 visitors being counted in March 2015, compared to the 4,489 visitor arrivals of last year.

Colombia and Suriname also registered increases in stay-over arrivals of respectively 79 percent and 2 percent. In absolute figures Colombia and Suriname registered 1,049 and 707 stay over arrivals. Brazil showed a decrease of 13 percent.

The European market recorded an increase of 5 percent in March 2015. The region provided a total of 16,938 stay-over arrivals compared to the 16,159 recorded in March 2014. The main producing country, The Netherlands, recorded a 2 percent decrease with 11,910 in March 2015 compared to 12,111 in 2014. Germany increased, recording 53 percent more visitors in March 2015. A total of 2,831 visitors were registered. Last year this same month recorded 1,850 German visitors.

Altogether, the first three months of 2015 shows an overall good performance of 13 percent growth compared to the same period last year. An additional 14,279 stay-over arrivals were registered, with growth coming from the three main regions for the island’s marketing and promotion.

The North American, South American and European region grew respectively by 21 percent, 41 percent and 3 percent. From the North American region, CTB registered a total of 24,697 visitors. The South American region counted 35,348 visitors, while from Europe the total number of visitors in the first three months was registered at 51,895 visitors.

In terms of visitor nights CTB reported a healthy 8 percent growth during the first three months of 2015. The preliminary statistics show a total of 1,088,512 nights in this period. Last year, the CTB registered 1,007,707 visitor nights. The North American region recorded 19 percent growth.

Visitors from this region spent all together 178,696 nights. From the South American region a 40 percent growth in visitor nights was registered, a total of 263,855 visitor nights. The visitor nights from Europe increased, recording 2 percent more visitor nights.

In absolute numbers the region’s share in visitor nights is 53.9 percent of the total nights spent in the first quarter of 2015. A total of 586,540 nights was accounted for by this region. The Caribbean region registered a decrease in visitor nights: 44,826 visitor nights was registered, 13 percent less than the first three months of 2014.

Utilizing the ‘Turistika Model’, CTB and MEO calculated that, during the first quarter of 2015, the tourism sector was directly responsible for generating US$119.4 million into the local economy. Last year, the first quarter of 2014 generated a total of US$103 million for the tourism sector.

European visitors are responsible for 44.9 percent of the total expenditure on island. Altogether Europeans spent a total US$53.7 million. They were followed by the South Americans who spent US$30.9 million and the North Americans who spent US$26.8 million. The Caribbean visitors spent a total of US$4.8 million in 2014.

The information gathered from the Embarkation/ Disembarkation Cards shows that 69.4 percent (85,435 visitors) of the stay-over visitors stayed at one of the registered accommodations in Curacao.

The share of arrivals among large hotels, small hotels, bungalows, apartments and guesthouse was 31.1 percent, 14.0 percent, 15.6 percent, 7.7 percent and 0.9 percent respectively. The number of visitors that stayed at a non-registered accommodation was 37,740. This was 30.6 percent of the overall arrivals.

Source: The Curacao Chronicle